


until the snow covers me up

by freshbloom



Series: The Clifftop Chronicles [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, basically im just really pretentious, snow puts me into a weird soft/happy/sad mood, so i wrote the mood out into this little drabble, so thats kind of what this is, somewhere between fluff and angst .... again, winter makes people happy but it can also feel sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 11:46:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13717029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshbloom/pseuds/freshbloom
Summary: Mike and El visit the clifftop in winter.(there's a snowstorm happening right now and it's all very beautiful and calming so i thought i'd write out something a bit softer. somewhat inspired by "Rosyln" by Bon Iver & St. Vincent, and the title is from "Landfill" by Daughter.)





	until the snow covers me up

“What are you thinking about?”

El turns at the sound of the voice, the sudden interruption causing her muscles to tense. She relaxes when it turns out to be Mike, standing beside her, bundled in what looked to be every layer of clothing he owned. February had smothered Hawkins in a haze of snow, the result of a series of storms that were both delicate and consuming. Temperatures were dropping into the negatives, prompting sweaters and overly puffy jackets to be dragged out of closets and layered into outfits. Mike and El were no exception, the both of them currently adorned in bobble hats, mittens, scarves and wool sweaters underneath their jackets. Despite the cold, El had still become fascinated with the snow, which was what had compelled her to brave the weather and watch as it fell from the most scenic spot in Hawkins, the clifftop.

“Mike, hey. Sit with me?” She says, looking up and smiling softly at him. He smiles back before dropping down beside her, the two of them shifting closer for extra warmth. Mike’s hair is windswept and littered with snow, nose and cheeks reddening from the sting of the cold, and El feels herself blush at how pretty he looks, caught in the thick of winter. They sit in silence for a while, staring out a the view before them. The lake is frozen over and dusted with snow, and the trees have become skeletal and crystallized in the winter air. Snow is falling gently from the sky and it’s serene in the way that only winter can be.

“You never answered the question.” Mike says eventually, gently nudging her shoulder.

“Hmm?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Oh…nothing, really. Just about the snow, I guess.” El replies, turning to look at him. 

“The snow?” He muses, his expression both questioning and amused.

“Yeah. It’s pretty, y’know? Gentle.” Mike hums in response, nodding and smiling softly at her. They go back to staring out at the lake and the forest, silence overtaking the area again. El had decided she loved snow from the very first second she saw it, out of the window of Hopper’s cabin. She’d felt so in awe at the beauty of the snowflakes, how they’d covered everything and anything and seemed to make it all so much prettier in a fragile sort of way. She felt the same way now, watching as the world became a white canvas. She loved the snow, though she didn’t understand it. El almost felt like winter was too precious, too good to be a part of this world. She almost felt like she shouldn’t be a spectator to something so pretty. 

“Mike?”

“Yeah?” 

“Do you ever feel like maybe…I don’t know, like maybe you don’t deserve this?” She questions. He turns and looks at her, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“What do you mean?” She doesn’t know how to answer that. In her mind, it seemed perfectly simple. After all that they had plagued this town, this world, their own selves with, it didn’t seem fair that the earth was still offering them peace. It seemed wrong, that there could be room for serenity when the wounds of Barb and Bob and Brenner and the lab remained open and screaming. She didn’t feel like she deserved it, all of it, Mike and Hawkins and winter, not when she had dug up so much ugly even though the world was made to be pretty. But El had never been good with words, and so she stays silent, staring out and searching for the right way to answer Mike’s question. 

“It’s my fault, Mike. Barb, Bob, everyone. I did that.” She says after a while, words piercing through the snow and the silence. Her voice is steady, even though she feels anything but. She hadn’t expected herself to say that, the confession had made its way past her mouth involuntarily and now it had been said it out loud, now it was real.

“I know.” Mike whispers, voice both gentle and a culmination of the storm surrounding them. It’s not the answer she was expecting, not in the slightest. El was sure he was going to adamantly deny her statement, not agree with it. She turns to look at him, eyes glistening with tears, and she’s terrified that he’s going to be staring through her, not at her. Terrified that his eyes will have become loveless and cold. But then their eyes meet and there’s none of those things. He looks at her, and it’s just the two of them, Mike and El, locking eyes a thousand times over. His eyes are still bright, and he’s still here and loving her in the midst of this storm. El thinks she might understand what he means. Mike knows a lot of things, he knows about science and D&D, about math and about friendships and promises. He also knows a lot of other things. Mike knows that the world seemed to exist in a measure of both pain and beauty; that one couldn’t exist without the other. He knows that this clifftop, with its frozen lake and crystallized trees and gentle covering of snow, is proof that things could still be lovely and could still be loved, if only for a moment. Mike and El are proof of that too. He knows that words aren’t suddenly going to change how she feels, she needs to overcome guilt on her own. Knows that maybe she did kill them, after all; maybe they all did. He knows and he loves her still. El gives him a watery-eyed smile, and he softly smiles back before pulling her into a hug. She nuzzles into his shoulder, and he pulls her closer until she’s practically on his lap, and she suddenly feels so warm that she can’t remember ever being cold. The two of them sit on that clifftop hugging each other for what seems like ages. They sit and let the snow lightly cover them until they’re not just caught in the storm, but a piece of it.


End file.
